SANTA CRUZ — This year marks 50 years since Santa Cruz hosted its first Pride event to provide a spirited gathering space for LGBTQ+ individuals at a time when such events were largely relegated to big cities.
To commemorate Santa Cruz Pride’s milestone, M.K. Contemporary Art Gallery will be getting a head start on Pride Month activities with “Here to Eternity,” an exhibit featuring the works of 14 LGBTQ+ artists May 2 through June 29.
Gallery owner Melissa Kriesa said staff were aware of the 50th anniversary of Santa Cruz Pride and met with textile artist Daniella Woolf about doing an exhibit.
“We all sat down one day and said, ‘Let’s do something really big for our exhibition,'” she said. “As far as we know, none of us had had any memory of a big Pride-related art exhibition in Santa Cruz that we could recall, so we’re really extra excited to do something special.”
The exhibit will feature art in a variety of forms, including painting, photography, sculpture and mixed media. Some pieces will tap into themes of LGBTQ+ identity, but all were created by LGBTQ+ artists from the Santa Cruz area and beyond. The featured artists include Woolf, Jason Adkins, Lauren Crux, Janet Fine, Angela Gleason, James Groleau, Emanuela I. Harris Sintamarian, Hedwig M. Heerschop, Tobin W. Keller, David Ligare, Doug McDonald, Quinn René Peck, Beth Shields and Lynne Todaro.
All of it is a showcase for Santa Cruz Pride, which is celebrating its golden anniversary this year. According to the organization’s website, the first festival was held in San Lorenzo Park in 1975 and featured four days of workshops, dancing, live music and a game of tug of war on both sides of the San Lorenzo River — with men on one side and women on the other.
In the years following the Stonewall Riots in 1969, where police raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village resulting in a clash between officers and LGBTQ+ patrons, many Pride marches were held throughout the world. However, these were mostly in big cities like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Santa Cruz was considered one of the smaller cities to host a Pride event when it put on its inaugural festival in 1975.
“It was definitely a small town that made a big splash because nobody else was doing it at our size and scale,” said Kriesa.
The event evolved into a parade down Pacific Avenue and also provided a venue for people to protest against anti-LGBTQ policies in its early years such as the Briggs Initiative, a 1978 California proposition that unsuccessfully sought to ban gay men and lesbians from working in public schools.
Kriesa said M.K. Contemporary Art Gallery already hosted a launch event for Santa Cruz Pride’s 50th anniversary for the city’s First Friday art tour in February, which featured live music and a speech by Mayor Fred Keeley.
“We just want to support that community any way we can, especially now,” she said.
For “Here to Eternity,” Kriesa said inquiries were sent out to artists gallery staff knew and researched other artists, specifically looking for those who would complement each other.
“It’s gonna be bold and fresh, and the artwork is really interesting,” she said.
Standout pieces for Kriesa include the figurative paintings of Carmel artist Ligare, who took inspiration from Greco-Roman narrative for pieces like “Hercules Protecting the Balance Between Pleasure and Virtue” based on a story by Greek philosopher Prodicus about young Hercules “having to decide between the ease of pleasure and the challenge of virtue,” per Ligare’s artist statement.
“In my painting ‘Virtue’ is taking a swing at ‘Pleasure’ who is sitting on the ground,” Ligare wrote. “Hercules, by intervening, retains the Classical balance.”
Woolf also contributed different abstract art pieces made entirely out of paper, Todaro created a tower made out of shards of plastic recovered from items like laundry baskets and storage bins, and Shields created abstract acrylics like “Storm at Sea” and “Desert Deluge,” which depict Shields’ yearning for adventure mixed with the grounding of being home as well as the beauty of the natural world.
Some of the pieces have LGBTQ+ themes, such as Gleason’s copper picture frame with iron gates that open to reveal a color photo of her and her partner contrasted with closed frames of vintage black and white photos of lesbian couples not allowed to have visible relationships.
“Some of the work is Pride-themed, and some of it is just great art by LGBTQ+ artists,” said Kriesa.
The exhibit will open with a First Friday preview exhibition May 2 featuring unique outfits designed and modeled by FashionTeens Santa Cruz.
“We’ve done this for a couple years now where we invite students to walk through the gallery (and) parade through in their outfits,” said Kriesa.
The First Friday Event is 6 to 8 p.m. May 2. The exhibit will open in earnest the following day with a reception 4 to 6 p.m. where attendees can meet the artists. A cocktail party is scheduled for May 8 and another First Friday event is set for June 6.
Kriesa said a major goal, as always, is to get patrons to purchase art and match pieces with collectors. Above all, she hopes visitors appreciate the talents of the artists.
“Each artist is just super in their painting and their mixed media and sculpture,” she said. “We hope that folks will come in and celebrate.”
The M.K. Contemporary Art Gallery is located at 703 Front St., Santa Cruz. Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Thursday through Sundays or by appointment. For information, go to MKcontemporary.art or email [email protected].
